Part 19
To this the President added in his message to Congress: “It is also unnecessary for me to point out that the declaration of principles includes of necessity the world need for freedom of religion and freedom of information. No society of the world organized under the announced principles could survive without these freedoms which are a part of the whole freedom for which we strive.” And Mr. Churchill made this significant comment in his broadcast: “There are, however, two distinct and marked differences in this joint declaration from the attitude adopted by the Allies during the latter part of the last war, and no one should overlook them. The United States and Great Britain do not now assume that there will never be any more war again. On the contrary, we intend to take ample precautions to prevent its renewal in any period we can foresee by effectively disarming the guilty nations while remaining suitably protected ourselves. The second difference is this: That instead of trying to ruin German trade by all kinds of additional trade barriers and hindrances as was the mood of 1917, we have definitely adopted the view that it is not in the interests of the world and of our two countries that any large nation should be unprosperous, or shut off from means of making a decent living for itself and its people by industry and enterprise. These are far-reaching changes of principle upon which all countries should ponder.”
* * * * *
The Axis statement begins with the declaration that the day of small or weak nations is over, and no nation which cannot stand on its own feet may be permitted to exist.
“1. The strongest powers must have the greatest opportunities of developing the world and disposing of such questions as spheres of influence, resources, and type of government. This is the law of nature and attempts to maintain the status quo of dominant powers who cannot continue to function through their strength but only through alliances must break down.”
The reference here of course is to such colonial powers as France, Holland, Belgium, etc.
“2. The nations called upon to settle world peace would be Germany, with Italy as a junior partner, Japan, the British Empire, and the United States. Such a peace should include: a. Parity of naval strength of Britain and the United States on one hand, and the Axis powers on the other hand, with a naval holiday after this is established.”
This is the key to the intention of the whole peace. Since the British and American navies are about double the strength of the Axis powers, so long as the British hold out we together could continue effectively to control the seas. If we were to consent to a naval agreement reducing our and the British strength to the strength of the Axis, and at the same time demilitarize our naval bases as demanded in other paragraphs, effective sea power would pass to the Axis.
“b. Demilitarization of such strongholds as Gibraltar, the Eastern Mediterranean, Malta, Aden, Red Sea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as all United States bases in the Pacific and any projects in the Aleutian Islands reaching out toward Japan.”
This paragraph would complete the conquest of sea power by the Axis and would render defenseless all the British Empire’s Far Eastern possessions and our Philippines and Alaska.
“c. Complete withdrawal of the British Navy from the Mediterranean and joint Anglo-Axis administration of the Suez Canal.”
Withdrawal of the British Navy would give mastery of the Mediterranean to the Axis, which would automatically control the Suez Canal. To offer “joint Anglo-Axis administration of the Suez Canal” is a sop which only underlines the grotesque nature of a Hitler-negotiated peace.
“d. All North Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar to Somaliland to be placed at the disposition of the Axis, though France may be permitted to retain colonies under certain conditions of co-administration. Certain British and African colonies to be placed under German and Italian control. South Africa would be required to have complete independence and abolish trade preference tariffs.”
The last sentence means that South Africa should leave the British Empire. The fleeting, condescending mention of the French who _may_ be permitted to share colonies is the only reference made to them. It ought to be noted carefully by the men of Vichy who pretend at any rate to believe that Hitler would not rob them if they abased themselves sufficiently. For the United States, the significant thing here is that Germany would control the naval, air, and military bases of Africa including Dakar opposite Brazil.
“e. Continental Europe to be organized into a corporate state under the Reich with domestic autonomy for unit members whose economic and political cooperation would be based on Berlin.”
There for all to read is the future map of Europe. The name of Europe itself will scarcely be needed any more, save as a geographical term once used to identify the continent now known as Great Germany. No more France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland. All will come under the Nazi yoke, even Spain and Portugal and the states which yielded without a struggle, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria. You ask, but isn’t this the unification of Europe we have all been hoping for? The answer is no, because what the world needed was a Europe voluntarily united in a United States of Europe, or whatever else you wanted to call it, for the purpose of promoting the mutual prosperity, health, and happiness of all its members. Hitler Europe’s avowed object is to confiscate and exploit the resources of the conquered states and to employ their man power as slaves for the exclusive, perpetual benefit of the “master race.” This is not a new Commonwealth of Nations; it is the first step in the Nazis’ program for the systematic degradation of the human race. The only parallel for it is in Aldous Huxley’s _Brave New World_. His robot human race was divided into Alpha masters and various classes of slaves, down to the Epsilon automatons who would correspond to Hitler’s Slavic serfs.
“f. The United Kingdom to remain the heart of the British Empire with a gradual transfer of authority to Canada.”
This seems to be a covert bid for isolationist approval in the United States, a hint that as the British Empire will not exist at all much longer, the United States may profit by absorbing Canada and whatever other vestigial remnants of the Empire may be granted Canada as the residuary legatee. This profit-taking by the United States has already been proposed by Lindbergh in his suggestion that we take over Canada.
“g. The German sphere of influence may go as far as the Sea of Marmora unless that were handed over to the joint administration of Turkey and Soviet Russia. But Germany may demand participation in the oil wells of Iraq and Iran.”
This paragraph has been rendered obsolete by the German invasion of Russia. Germany certainly hopes eventually to get all the oil of Iraq and Iran.
“h. The United States’ sphere of influence would be Canada, Central and South America, Newfoundland, and Greenland with islands and regional waters, but the United States would undertake not to form any hegemony over South America inimical to the Axis and would accord the fullest freedom and equality of opportunity to Germany and her Allies in that continental brotherhood. No American naval bases would be west of Hawaii, and that stronghold would be reduced in importance.”
How does it feel to an American to hear this sort of dictation? It is dignified treatment compared with what we would receive if we acceded. Never was a proverb more true than the old Russian one, based on the bitter experience of their vassalage to the Tartars. “A nation is never too poor to pay the first installment of tribute and never rich enough to pay the last.” We are asked to give up all our naval bases in the Pacific west of Hawaii, but there is no hint of Japanese reciprocity. The Japanese when the time came would move in and fortify the bases we had dismantled.
“i. In the Pacific the Netherlands Indies might be detached from the Netherlands and placed under an independent government with native
## participation, and British possessions would obtain increasing
independence. Throughout all these Pacific islands, Japanese advisors would be admitted and entrusted with the duty of rationalizing forms of cooperation in the ‘co-prosperity sphere.’ French Indo-China would receive independence on the same terms.”
We see now what this “independence” is. Just twelve weeks after the publication of these “peace terms” the Japanese took over Indo-China.
These peace terms are not even hypocritically polite. They simply assume the opposite “negotiators” are beaten, and that of course includes the United States, as we may see from our prominent position among its stipulations. Lindbergh declares we would be beaten from the start if we entered the war, and that a negotiated peace would be more acceptable than outright military defeat. But these terms, vouched for by the Imperial Japanese Foreign Office organ, show us that we would be treated as a conquered nation if we negotiated a peace.
“j. Australia would remain within the British Empire, but would eliminate immigration bars and allow Japanese settlement on terms of equality.”
The exclusively Japanese interests would be safeguarded by Germany in a negotiated peace only if Japan had earned it by following German orders. Japan, however, may disappoint her senior partner.
The next to last paragraph reads ironically:
“k. India would obtain self-government.”
We may be sure that if the Axis wins, India will not receive self-government. Both Germany and Japan want India. Somewhere in the path of this war appears the possibility of a clash between the Germans and the Japanese. Already Japan shows signs of being afraid that if Germany wins, Japan will suffer the same fate as Italy and Russia. Japan likewise shows signs of wanting to wait for better evidence that the Allies are going to win. Stranger things have happened in this war than that Japan should finally quit the Axis and go to war on the side of Britain and the United States.
But the most ironic paragraph of this peace offer is the last:
“l. Religious and political liberty would be enjoined throughout the world.”
That’s all. That completes the offer of negotiated peace.
Q. _Why do they call it a negotiated peace?_
A. It is not “negotiated.” It is a dictated peace; it represents a complete Hitler victory but that is the only kind of negotiated peace he would consider until he is himself defeated.
Q. _But is it possible that these are authentic, genuine terms of the Axis? It seems to me that the publication of such arrogant demands upon America was an undiplomatic step, contrary to the interests of the Axis, since it would be bound to arouse our indignation._
A. It was a “semi-official” publication of the Japanese Foreign Office at the very time when the then Foreign Minister Matsuoka advised Anthony Eden that Japan was ready to mediate a negotiated peace if she were requested to do so. Its authentic character can hardly be questioned. If it is arrogant it is because the Axis is arrogant, and considers that Britain is already beaten and that the United States was beaten before she began to fight. As the _Japan Times Advertiser_ put it: “These may be called victors’ terms but the Axis powers have achieved a dominant position permitting liberty of dictation.” These terms could not be worse if we had entered the war and lost it. They would mean that from now on until perhaps centuries later when the Nazis shall have become soft and self-indulgent and until some new, rougher race arose to oust them, the Germans would rule the earth. For of course if Britain or America were to be willing to accept such terms it would prove they really were beaten.
During the period immediately after the signing of the negotiated peace which would be used by the Germans to consolidate and strengthen their military position, we should probably be allowed to retain our nominal sovereignty, although we should not be able to do anything in the realm of foreign politics or economics that was not permitted by Germany. During this period our Lindberghs would declaim that they had been right after all since we had not been invaded and we still elected our own president and still sang “God Bless America,” and still called ourselves the land of the free and home of the brave; and the Lindberghs would insist that the sacrifices we had made were far better than to have fought a war. But soon we should find that Hitler’s idea of “equality” in South America meant complete Nazi monopoly. Soon we should find we had lost all our world trade save that permitted us by the Axis with the Axis on Axis terms.
Q. _Would the Nazi use of slave labor be an advantage? Can’t free American labor always produce better and cheaper than slave labor?_
A. That is one of our popular fallacies. We proclaim this doctrine at the same time that we use tariffs to protect American industry from the products of foreign workers who receive lower wages than American workers. Japanese manufactured articles, the cheapest in the world because they are made by virtually slave labor, were able to flood our market in spite of our high tariffs. For ordinary mass production, for nearly every type of manufactured article save quality goods, slave labor is more profitable than free labor. If it is not so efficient, it makes up for that by being so much cheaper. If Hitler were to get his slave Europe organized, he could turn out products which would undersell anything we could make.
Q. _Wouldn’t he try to make us take his goods also?_
A. He would. We are talking now of the alternative to our going to war and defeating Hitler. We are visualizing the situation as it would be after Hitler had won, and had made all of those arrangements with the rest of the world which we have described, and was now in process of adjusting his Empire to the United States, or rather of adjusting the United States to his Empire. We are discussing now how we would have to behave if we wished to continue to be at peace with Hitler. We would of course have to make some kind of trade agreement with him. What kind of trade agreement do you think Hitler would propose? We can suppose he would offer us the same kind of agreement he has concluded with other states before they fell, or before they volunteered to become his vassals--the sort of agreements he had with Jugoslavia, or Greece, and with Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. These agreements provide that German goods may enter at lower tariffs than the goods of other countries or that tariffs on German goods are abolished altogether, and usually the country concerned must promise to take a minimum quantity of whatever articles Germany wishes to export. If we hoped to have any kind of trade agreement with the victorious Germans at all, it would have to be one like this. We should probably have to consent to receive German goods in such quantities and at such prices that our own industry would step by step be ruined. This would be the German aim. They intend to make German industry not only the only industry in Europe, but the master of the manufacturing world. They intend to wreck any industry they cannot control.
Q. _But you don’t think we would put up with such treatment as that, do you? It would be better to go to war, wouldn’t it?_
A. By that time it might be too late to go to war. Now is the time to go to war. Now is the time to avoid those calamities we have just discussed. If we had done nothing to protect ourselves while we still had the power to protect ourselves and still had strong allies fighting in the field, what use would there be to try to resist Hitler after he had become master of the world outside America? We should then face the alternative of submission to Hitler or fighting an almost hopeless war.
Our isolationists like the Quislings and the Darlans and Lavals abroad, are working themselves into the position of the French collaborationists. That is, they are going so far out on the limb of isolation-appeasement that eventually they will not be able to withdraw. Even today they refuse to admit their error. If the worst came to the worst and we remained out of the war, and Hitler won, and all these things we are discussing came to pass, our isolationists would be bound to continue to contend that they were right, and they would have to advocate collaboration with Hitler, as indeed many of them do now. We can see what collaboration means in France. Ninety-five per cent of the French people are against it, and five per cent who advocate and practice it are now considered traitors. This would be the history of our isolationists also. When the alternative, war or surrender, was offered, their answer would be that war was hopeless, and the only sensible thing to do would be to collaborate with Hitler.
Q. _But isn’t there another way out for us? Couldn’t we simply give up our foreign trade? In 1939 it amounted to only about six billion dollars. What is that compared with the monstrous expense of war? It is only one-seventh of the amount we have already agreed to spend for defense. It is only one-tenth of our national income._
A. Even if our total foreign trade represented only one-tenth of our total business activity, that would make it vitally important, for as you know, in an economy such as ours, ten per cent means all the difference between failure and success. Hitler said of Germany, “we must export or die.” Our case is not that desperate, but it would be fair to say we must export or suffer a lower standard of living and increased unemployment. Witness the effect on this country of our war export business which has revitalized the entire economic system and practically wiped out unemployment. Before long the last of our unemployed ought to be at work, as they have all found jobs in England. Of course if we wished to crawl into a completely abject isolation, we could give up our foreign trade, recall our ships from the seven seas, seal our ports, and retire into a kind of hillbilly life, eating our corn bread and sowbelly, drinking our home-brew, and supporting a permanent mass of millions of unemployed.
Even if we attempted such a thing we would not be permitted to continue to live peacefully behind our imagined walls. The world wants what we can produce. Nazi Germany wants it. If we were to carry the isolationist argument to its final absurdity and really try to set up a complete autarchy and live within the continental borders of the United States, the Nazis would never let us do so. From within and from without the Nazis would attack us. Our own Nazis would labor to bring us into Hitler’s New Order, while the German Nazis would assume the role of our own Commodore Perry and as he broke open the Japanese closed door in 1854 the Nazis would smash the locks of American isolation.
We are discussing what would be a comparatively short period of time, the period between the end of the war with a Hitler-negotiated peace and the moment when he felt himself strong enough to resume the war, this time to conquer all that was left unconquered at the first truce. As soon as he had his machine in order and perceived that his strength had risen relative to ours to such a point that he considered victory certain, he, with Japan, would attack Britain, then America. If we had agreed to any such negotiated peace such as the one we have been discussing, we would be lost. Britain and America have held out so far because despite the importance of air power, sea power is still paramount and we have had sea power. We would not have it after a negotiated peace.
Q. _But aren’t these terms of a negotiated peace somewhat dated now since the German attack on Russia? Hasn’t the unexpectedly strong Russian resistance diminished Hitler’s feeling that he can already dictate as a victor?_
A. No doubt Hitler’s arrogance has been reduced at least a little since the “scum of the earth” checked his warriors, but the Russian setback to Hitler has been only that, and it has not yet changed his long-range plans. He still aspires to conquer the world and he still believes he can do it, and any negotiated peace he may offer, whether it is the one whose terms we have just discussed, or some other terms more fitted to the moment, will be calculated to give the Germans a respite in preparation for resumption of the war. That, after all, is the important point to remember. Specific terms are at this juncture unimportant. It is only essential to remember that _any_ negotiated peace with Hitler would not be a peace at all, but only a truce to which Hitler would never agree unless he believed he would thereby be strengthened for renewal of the war. We can never emphasize too much that there is no such thing as a peace with Hitler; there is no such thing as a peaceful Hitler; Hitler will either conquer or be conquered.
Q. _But if Britain and the United States had agreed to the sort of negotiated peace offered through Tokyo, they would have surrendered practically everything, so why should Hitler go to the trouble of attacking us?_
A. Because Hitler does not want “practically” everything; he wants absolutely everything. Also Hitler cannot stop making war; it will take a greater Nazi than he to convert the German war machine to garrison duties and the Nazi hordes to peaceful production.
No conqueror ever stops conquering until he is stopped by some outside force. Alexander was just getting into his stride and longing for more worlds to conquer when he died of a fever after drinking too much. Hitler will never be stopped that way. Caesar was stopped by the assassin’s dagger. That could stop Hitler but it would be foolish to depend upon it. Napoleon was stopped at Waterloo by superior force. That we hope will be Hitler’s end. But never did a conqueror stop as our Lindberghs believe Hitler would stop, of his own accord, satisfied with what he had won. Far more true is the analysis by my old friend Douglas Miller, who during his fifteen years as United States Commercial Attaché in Berlin was the constant source of knowledge about the Nazis for all of us American newspapermen, and who now has written the wisest book about the Nazis to appear from the pen of an American, _You Can’t Do Business with Hitler_.